The examination of a tumor for a subject has been executed by obtaining images with endoscopes being intubated into the hollow viscera regions such as trachea, respiratory system, and intestinal canal.
However, the above examinations have been imposing a strain on the subjects such as the pain of intubating the endoscopes into the hollow viscera regions of the subjects.
Virtual endoscopy described in Patent Document 1 cut down the burden on the subject because it uses data of X-ray CT images that provides images that are equivalent to those of endoscopes and thus intubation of the endoscopes is unnecessary.
However, virtual endoscopy described in the Patent Document 1 has the disadvantage of having a narrow view for display, thus it takes a long time to perform an examination on each patient since the whole hollow viscera region such as a trachea has to be diagnosed with a narrow field of view. The demand for improving the efficiency of diagnosis is not mentioned in the document.
Patent Document 1: JP-A-2002-238887